NATURAL RESOURCES: Woodman, Chop that Tree!

Fifty years ago last week,
Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot organized a Government agency to
preserve what was left of the American forest. They were none too soon:
in less than three centuries, the pioneers had ripped deeply into the
continent's skin of trees, and another century might have left the U.S.
as bare and barren as a desert. From the time of the first settlers,
Americans had operated on a theory of chop and run; they had none of
the Western European's respect for the wealth of forests. The
mythological hero,...